


fissure

by besselfcn



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (or at least secondarily sexual), Impact Play, Just Creepy Eye Things, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Non-Sexual Kink, Undernegotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:27:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26243404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: Jon’s eyes are wide, bottomless pits. His mouth is held open in reverie.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 20
Kudos: 94





	fissure

In the skeletal ruins of what used to be Northumbria, Jon falls to his knees. 

Time is a memory now more than it is a force that guides them, but Martin tries to get them to stop and sit a while every time he has the thought _Jesus, we’ve been on this a long time._ It’s often futile — sitting and _waiting_ in a world of nothingness feels worse, somehow, than trudging through it — but he wants to try. He doesn’t want to get back to the real world and forget to do things like sit down or drink water. 

“The real world,” Jon had laughed when first he’d said that; the horrible, dark laugh that he wears now, that doesn’t sound like him but like something _inside_ him. 

Anyway. They leave the rotten theater far behind and Martin says _stop, hold on, let’s catch our breath a moment_ and Jon says _yes, alright_ , and then he sinks, slow and deliberate, to his knees and looks up at Martin through thick lashes.

“Oh,” Martin says. He looks around instinctively, as if anybody in the world is here or is actually, in fact, anywhere at all. “Oh, do you — do you want to — “

Usually they find a bed first, or something that is shaped like a bed. (Only once has it turned out to be spiders, which Martin counts a win.) But he’s not… well, Jon’s appetite isn’t exactly _voracious_ , and he’s not about to say _no_.

“No, not,” Jon says, and then licks his lips, shakes his head and tries again. “Not exactly. I want. I _need_ you to… to hit me.”

Martin lets his mouth fall open gently in surprise. 

Jon stares at him, unmoving. 

“Okay,” Martin says. “Okay, I — what?”

“Hit me,” Jon repeats. “It’s grounding, it. When you hit me, it feels like _something_. In a way other things don’t.” 

Martin’s hands ache. His stomach spikes with arousal. 

“You don’t _have_ to of course, if you don’t want to,” Jon says, quickly. “I mean, I should have — I ought to have asked, first, instead of just… it’s just that I was thinking of it while we were walking, and you said to stop and I — “

Martin hits him. 

A sharp, flat palm against the side of Jon’s face. The sound cracks and cascades across the landscape, ringing out hollow until it fills Martin’s _bones_ with its presence. Static builds in his blood, a sharp and focused fizzing that starts at Jon and radiates outward.

“Jesus, Jon,” Martin breathes. “Jesus, was that alright?”

Jon’s eyes are wide, bottomless pits. His mouth is held open in reverie.

“Harder,” he asks-begs-c _ompels_ , and Martin raises a hand to strike him. 

This time the crack _hurts_ , sends pain singing through Martin’s fingertips and produces an audible sound of wind being knocked from Jon’s lungs. Martin is not a sadist — has never _thought_ of himself as a sadist, at least — but watching Jon _open_ and _blossom_ under the strikes has him fidgeting uncomfortably where he stands as heat pools between his legs. 

“You’re incredible, Jon,” Martin babbles, because there’s nothing else on his tongue. 

“Again,” Jon begs. He’s panting. “Harder. Make it _hurt_.”

He doesn’t know how to make it worse. He wants to. He wants to see Jon splinter underneath his hands. 

He backhands Jon this time, and feels an explosion of pain across his knuckles and sees the red mark forming on Jon’s high cheekbone. Jon _whines_ , buckles forward with the blow and then leans back, his head tipped towards the horrible sky, groaning and laughing all at once. 

“Good?” Martin asks.

“ _More,_ ” Jon growls.

Martin hesitates for just a moment, then reaches down and undoes Jon’s belt. 

Jon’s stomach feels searing hot where Martin touches it in his frantic motions to undo the clasp. He wrestles it out of the belt loops with some muttering, Jon’s forehead resting against Martin’s shoulder as he does. 

When he pulls back, he’s got the belt held in one hand, forming short loop of leather that he tests out gently against his own palm. 

“You’ll stop me if it’s too much,” Martin says. 

“I’ll stop you,” Jon agrees. 

Martin brings the belt down across his cheekbone.

The result is _instantaneous_. The landscape bursts with the sound — a thick, weighty slap that he couldn’t have replicated with his hand. Jon’s face blooms with heat, his neck snapping to the side; and his eyes are _wild_ , his fingers digging deep into the earth. Before he can react Martin hits him again, the other side, and he lets out a moan like Martin has never heard before, something guttural and animal that makes Martin want to push him to the ground and use his mouth for something else.

“Harder, _please_ ,” Jon rasps, and Martin puts his full force behind the next blow. 

It splits Jon’s cheek. Opens a gash right along his skin above the bone, an ugly thing that explodes in red and pink and awful wetness and Martin nearly drops the belt but then —

By the time Jon turns his face back to Martin, it is gone. A thin splotch of blood across his face, and nothing else; no scar, no mark. 

“Again,” Jon says, insatiable.

Martin doesn’t listen, this time. This time he reaches a hand out and brushes a shaky thumb over the blood. It’s gone. The blood is there, but the mark is gone — just gone, like that. 

“Martin,” Jon whispers.

He does drop the belt, now; lets it fall gently from his hands. He puts his thumbs back to Jon’s cheekbones. All the marks are gone, all the broken blood vessels and patterned strikes. All that’s left is his skin. He’s looking at Martin with those eyes of his; open and immobile. 

When’s the last time he saw Jon blink?

He moves his thumb upwards, over the cheekbones and to the pulpy, purple skin under Jon’s eyes. He pushes the bottom lid — he wants to feel it, the fragility, the _reality_ — wants to press thumbs into his eyes and feel them give, just gently, just enough to see if — 

There are no moments between that one and the one where Martin is on his back, gazing at the sky. There are no breaths between it, no thoughts or beats of his heart. One instant he is standing, looking down at Jon; the next, he is gasping desperately for air, his back an aching mess where he has landed. 

Jon is on hands and knees over him, saying something frantic. _I didn’t_ or _it wasn’t_ or _I didn’t know_. The last one would make Martin laugh if he could draw in enough air to do it. 

The ringing in his ears subsides long enough for Martin to push himself up on his elbows. The new position helps his diaphragm, lets him suck in a few desperate gulps while Jon exhales slowly next to him. 

He looks where he is; where Jon is. Twenty feet away, he can see Jon’s belt coiled up in the dirt. 

“Well,” Martin says, and then coughs while Jon rubs circles into his back and murmurs _sorry, I’m so sorry._ He tries again. “Well. Might need to set some boundaries for the two of us, then, don’t we.”

**Author's Note:**

> [slaps the archivist] this bad boy can fit so much eldritch horror in him


End file.
